England and Germany

by Emile Joseph Dillon

At first M. Bratiano swam with the stream. He assured foreign diplomatists, eminent Italians and others, that Roumania had decided to throw in her lot with the Allies. And his declarations were re-echoed by his colleagues. These statements were duly transmitted to the various Cabinets interested, and the entry of Roumania into the struggle was reckoned with by all the Allied Powers. On the strength of these good intentions one of the Allies was asked to advance a certain sum of money for military preparations, and the request was complied with. Italy was approached and treated as a trusty confidant, and a tacit arrangement was come to with her by which each of the two Latin States was expected to communicate with the other as soon as it should decide to take the field. In fine, it was understood that Roumania would join in at the same time as Italy.

Cognizant of those intentions and preparations the Allies rejoiced exceedingly. The prospect that opened out before them appeared cheerful. Kitchener’s great army was to take the offensive in spring, Roumania’s co-operation was due some months or weeks previously, and the forcing of the Dardanelles might be counted upon as a corollary, to say nothing of the adherence of Greece and Bulgaria to the allied cause. But Germany and Austria lost nothing of their self-confidence. Clumsy though their professional diplomacy might be, their economico-diplomatic campaign had left little to be desired. Its fruits were ripe. They had firmly knitted the material interests of the little Latin State with their own, and could rely on the backing of nearly every supporter of Bratiano’s Cabinet in the country. But leaving nothing to chance, they now put forth the most ingenious, persistent and costly efforts to maintain the ground they had won. Influential newspapers were bought or subsidized, new ones were founded, public servants were corrupted, calumnies were launched against the Allies and their supporters, and a nucleus of military men ranged themselves among the opponents of intervention.

M. Bratiano suddenly turned wary and circumspect. His talk was now of the necessity of time for preparations, of the divergence of views between his Cabinet and that of the Tsar, and of the inadequacy of the motives held out to his country for belligerency. Thereupon negotiations began between Russia and Roumania, which dragged on endlessly. What the Roumanian Premier said to the Russian Minister was practically this: “The choice between belligerency and neutrality must be determined by the balance of territorial advantages offered by each. And the terms must be adequate and guaranteed.” The conditions which, according to him, answered to this description consisted of the cession of all Transylvania, part of the Banat of Temesvar, the Roumanian districts of Bukovina, and of the province of Crishana and Marmaros.

About Transylvania there was no dissentient voice: it was admitted that it ought by right to form part of the Roumanian kingdom. The dispute between Bucharest and Petrograd hinged on a zone of the Banat and a strip of Bukovina. The Tsar’s Government admitted that Bukovina might be annexed by Roumania as far as the river Seret, but not farther north; whereas the Roumanian Premier insisted on obtaining the promise of a zone the northern boundary of which would be formed by the river Pruth, and would therefore include the important city of Czernowitz, which is the capital of the province. The divergence of opinion arising out of this demand for the district of Pancsova in the Banat of Temesvar raised a formidable obstacle to an understanding, for the claim runs counter to the principle of nationality somewhat pedantically laid down by the Allied Powers. Parenthetically, it is worth remembering that hard-and-fast principles which lead insensibly to dogmatism cannot be too sedulously avoided by a Government. Politics must assuredly have its ideals, but compromise is the method by which alone it can approach them. The Allies have already been constrained by tyrannous circumstance to entertain important exceptions to their principle of nationality which was invoked against Italy’s claim to Dalmatia, and in their own best interests they might have compromised on the subject of Bulgaria’s claims to Macedonia, and of Roumania’s pretensions to annex certain of the disputed territories inhabited by Serbs and Ruthenians.

In truth, Roumania’s attitude, of which at various times conflicting accounts have been given, appears to be what one might reasonably expect, considering the sympathies of the nation, the interests of the State, and the requirements of the conjuncture. Looking at it from the view-point of the outsider, it would perhaps have been to her interest to join the Allies when the Russians, driving the Magyars and the Austrians before them, could have played the part of right wing to her armies. It was generally believed later on that she would unsheathe the sword at the same time as Italy. Informal announcements to that effect are known to have been made to certain official representatives of that country. And her failure to stand by these spontaneous declarations was the cause of profound disappointment to the Entente and of a considerable loss of credit to herself. These facts and conclusions appeal with irresistible force to the uninitiated, and in especial to those among them who are citizens of the belligerent States.

But there is another aspect of the matter which, whatever effect its disclosure may have on the general verdict, is at any rate well worth considering. According to this version, which is based on what actually passed between Bucharest and the capitals of the Entente Powers, the central idea of Roumania’s strivings was to achieve national unity together with defensible military frontiers as far as appeared feasible, and to obtain in advance implicit assurances that the Entente Powers, if victorious, would allow her claims without demur or delay. The territories occupied by the Roumanians of Transylvania, the Bukovina, and the Banat were to be united under the sceptre of the King, including the strip which is contiguous to Belgrade. To this the Slavs demurred because Belgrade could then no longer remain the Serbian capital. But of these demands M. Bratiano would make no abatement, nor in the promise of the Entente to fulfil them would he admit of any ambiguity. Roumania’s experience in 1877, under M. Bratiano’s father, when, after having helped Russia to defeat the Turks, she was deprived of Bessarabia and obliged to content herself with the Dobrudja, was the main motive for this striving after definite conditions, while her readiness to look upon that loss of Bessarabia as final moved her to demand every rood of Austro-Hungarian territory which was inhabited by her kinsmen or had belonged to them in bygone days. These motives were inconsistent with the mooting of the Bessarabian question, and the statement so often made in the Press that Roumania demanded, and still demands, that lost province from Russia are absolutely groundless. The subject was never once broached.

It has been argued that although these claims to recompense may have been reasonable enough in themselves, to have made them conditions of Roumania’s participation in the war on the side of the Allies smacked more of the pettifogger than of the statesman. In a tremendous struggle like the present for lofty ideals this bargaining for territorial advantages showed, it was urged, the country and the Government in a sinister light. To this criticism the friends of M. Bratiano reply that most of the belligerents set the example, with far less reason than Roumania could plead. Italy, for instance, had made her military co-operation conditional on the promise of a large part of Dalmatia, as well as the terra irredenta, and Russia insisted upon having her claim to Constantinople allowed. Why, it is asked, should Roumania be blamed for acting similarly and on more solid grounds?

During the first phase of the conversations which were carried on between Roumania and the Entente there would appear to have been no serious hitch. They culminated in a loan of £5,000,000 advanced in January 1915. In the following month they ceased and were not resumed until April, when M. Bratiano was informed that it would facilitate matters if he would discuss terms with the Tsar’s Government. By means of an exchange of notes an arrangement had been come to by which Roumania was to have “the country inhabited by the Roumanians of Austria-Hungary” in return for her neutrality and on the express condition that she should occupy them par les armes before the close of the war. I announced this agreement in the summer of 1915 and, commenting on the controversy to which it gave rise, pointed out that it amounted only to a promise made by Russia and an option given to Roumania, which the latter state was at liberty to take up or forgo as it might think fit. It bound her to nothing. Consequently, to accuse her of having broken faith with Italy or the Entente is to betray a complete lack of acquaintance with the facts.

It was only when Roumania’s military participation was solicited that difficulties began to make themselves felt. And they proved insurmountable. So long as the Russian armies were victorious Roumania’s demands were rejected. When the Tsar’s troops, for lack of ammunition, were obliged to retreat, concessions were made very gradually, slight concessions at first, which became larger as the withdrawal proceeded, until finally—the Russian troops being driven out—everything was conceded, when it was too late. For with the departure of the Russian armies Roumania was so exposed to attack from various sides, and so isolated from her protectors, that her military experts deemed intervention to be dangerous for herself and useless to the Allies.

In Italy, it has been said with truth, the conviction prevailed that Roumania would descend into the arena as soon as the Salandra Cabinet had declared war against Austria, and a good deal of disappointment was caused by M. Bratiano’s failure to come up to this expectation. But the expectation was gratuitous and the disappointment imaginary. In an article written at the time I pointed out that one of the mistakes made by the Entente Powers consisted in the circuitous and clumsy way in which they negotiated with Roumania. The spokesman and guardian of Italy during the decisive conversations with the Entente was the Foreign Minister, Baron Sonnino, the silent member of the Cabinet. Now, this turned out to be a very unfortunate kind of guardianship, which his ward subsequently repudiated with reason. For one effect of his taciturnity—the Roumanians ascribed it to his policy—was to keep Roumania in the dark about matters of vital moment to her of which she ought to have had cognizance. Another was to treat with the Entente Governments as though Roumania had sold her will and private judgment to the Salandra Cabinet. This, however, is a curious story of war diplomacy which had best be left to the historian to recount. One day it will throw a new light upon matters of great interest which are misunderstood at present. Roumania’s co-operation then, as now, would have been of much greater help to the Allies than certain other results which were secured by sacrificing it. And sacrificed it was quite wantonly. We are wont to sneer at Germany’s diplomacy as ridiculously clumsy, and to plume ourselves on our own as tactful and dignified. Well, if one were charged with the defence of this thesis, the last source to which one would turn for evidence in support of it is our diplomatic negotiations with M. Bratiano’s Cabinet.